


Guys and Dolls

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft
Genre: Gen, Jungle Gang, Non-human hermits - Freeform, doll!Grian, no beta we die like Scar clipping a tree, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28551546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: Grian has lost an item that’s very important to him. Unfortunately, it’s hard to ask around about something that’s been kept a deep secret for years.
Comments: 18
Kudos: 147





	Guys and Dolls

Grian dug out a few more blocks and stretched. This was a good stopping point. He scratched at his wrist and trotted inside. He hadn’t checked in with himself in a while; he should probably do so. So, he found a safe spot, sat down, and stared into the middle distance. He wasn’t expecting anything too different from last time-

Green. Leaves? Leaves bigger than he was, all around him! His arm was caught between branches. He pushed at it, but he was lying at an awkward angle, and didn’t have the strength to free himself. This wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Grian did his best to look around, get his bearings, and hopefully see something that could tell him where he was. But all he could see was foliage. The only clue was grass below him. He was close to the ground; in a bush, not a tree. And probably still in the jungle. Probably.

Grian returned to himself in his mansion and immediately got up. This was not good. Where could he have gone?

The first place he looked was his own starter area, beginning with the shelf that usually was his pride-of-place inside. The shelf was empty, of course. Not many clues... but one witness.

“Professor Beak,” Grian addressed the blue parrot sitting nearby. “Did you see anything? What happened here?”

Professor Beak made a noise that sounded almost like a meow and started chewing lightly on his foot.

“Well, you’re no help.” Grian cast his eyes around the floor, then stepped outside again and started rummaging through bushes. It should be easy to spot the bright red of his quarry against the green leaves, but he found nothing. Not here, then.

Grian stared out at the unkempt undergrowth of the wild jungle, hoping against hope that the missing item wasn’t out there in the middle of it somewhere. He’d ask around first. With five people in the jungle, surely someone might have seen it.

\-----

It only took a quick flight around Iskall’s tree to confirm that it wasn’t there. Iskall had been using only oak leaves, and Grian had pretty clearly seen jungle leaves. He did check the shoreline around the roots, though. Thankfully, Iskall was elsewhere, and Grian didn’t have to explain to them what he was doing.

\-----

He wasn’t so lucky at Mumbo’s base.

“Grian, what-”

Grian straightened up from where he had buried himself in Mumbo’s terraforming, inside the main stone tower. It seemed unlikely that what he was looking for had made it all the way out here, but he had to check just in case. He rubbed his wrist nervously as he met Mumbo’s eyes. “Um, hi Mumbo! I was just, uh... looking for something.”

Mumbo narrowed his eyes. Grian’s blank face gave nothing away. “Looking for something, eh? What were you expecting to find in my plants?”

“Well, it’s...” Grian struggled. This had been a well-guarded secret of his for a very long time. He hadn’t told anyone about it before, even Mumbo. “It’s a thing, about yay big” - he held out his hands around a foot apart- “and it uh... well, if you’ve seen it, you’d probably guess straight away that it’s something of mine...”

Mumbo gave him a weird look. “Hmm, well I can’t say I’ve seen anything like that around here, mate. Good luck in finding your... thing.”

\-----

His next stop was Stress’s base. She spotted Grian right away and waved at him, so he spiraled down and landed in front of her.

“Hi!” Stress greeted. “This is a surprise. You all don’t often come round to visit little ol’ me!”

Grian’s cheeks crinkled in an almost-visible smile. Stress’s enthusiasm was infectious. “Not nearly enough, frankly. This place is pretty cool! But I’m here because I’m looking for something in particular.”

“Oh?” Stress was instantly curious. “What would that be, then?”

Grian had practiced what he would say between Mumbo’s base and here. “It’s kind of a secret thing, but it’s about so big, and it’s got red on like my jumper. It’s pretty important to me. You’d probably know it if you see it.”

“Huh,” Stress mused. “I did see an ocelot run through here yesterday with somefin’ red in its mouth. I followed it for a bit, but it ran off. I figured it just got itself an unlucky parrot, you know? But maybe that was the thing you’re lookin’ for? Bit of a long shot, but there’s a chance, right?”

“Oh, it might be, actually!” Grian had gotten a weird feeling at about the same time that Stress mentioned, that he had meant to investigate. An ocelot carrying this off might have been the culprit. “Which way did it go?”

Stress wrinkled her nose. “I fink it was off toward Scar’s village? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Scar managed to tame the little guy somehow, you know how he is wiv cats.”

“Alright, I’ll head that way,” Grian decided. “Thanks for the help!”

\-----

“Oh yeah, there was a wild cat around here!” Scar recalled. “It was carrying a little Grian doll, I remember now.”

Grian snapped his fingers. “That’s the one! What happened to it?”

Scar cast his eyes around the village. “Well, I tried to get close, but I spooked the cat. It dropped the doll and ran off. I picked up the doll and put it... somewhere around here...” He eyed the giant chestmonster spilling into the space and gave a disappointed sigh. “I don’t remember where, though.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not in your boxes,” Grian said distractedly, looking around for likely locations. “Maybe you set it on the wall of a farm and it fell?”

“That’s right! That’s what I did!” Scar exclaimed. “I didn’t realize it had fallen. I had, uh, kind of forgotten it was there by the time that happened. But how did you know?”

“This may sound weird,” Grian said, trotting over to the nearest farm wall and poking through the bushes beneath, “and I’ll explain further when I find it. But basically, if I want to, I can see through that body’s eyes, among other things. I tried that this morning, and all I saw was leaves and a bit of grass. So it’s gotta be in the bushes.”

“What, can you possess the minds of dolls that look like you or something?” Scar joked, joining the search.

“Other way round, really. Aha!” Grian triumphantly pulled the little doll out of the leaves. “Finally. I have been looking all day for me.”

Scar frowned. “Run that sentence by me again?”

Grian laughed and turned around, the doll lookalike secure in his arms. “Scar, you are now in on a secret that literally  _ no one _ else in this world - except X, because he has to for admin stuff - knows. Meet... the real Grian.”

Scar looked between Grian-the-doll’s button-eyed, otherwise featureless face, and Grian-the-person’s identical, button-eyed face. It looked so much more normal on the doll than the person - though, like many of the strange features of the hermits, most people had grown accustomed to Grian’s face being the way it was. No one had ever questioned it. But... 

“Wait,” Scar said. “So the little guy is you, and you’re like a clone or something? There’s two of you?”

“This body is more of a puppet than a clone, actually,” Grian explained. He put his doll self down on the cobblestone. Without warning, he crumpled to the ground, sagging as though his human-sized body was now the boneless doll. Scar gasped and jumped back. “Wha- Grian!!”

Grian, now looking around and moving in his doll body, looked up at Scar and waved, laughing. “Hello!”

Scar dropped down onto his hands and knees, staring at Grian with huge, curious eyes. “Grian?? Oh my gosh, you scared the living daylights out of me! I thought you were- well, I didn’t know what to think!”

Grian waved his plush nubbin hand dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry about me. This is just what I do. The look on your face, though-” He doubled over laughing again.

Scar frowned, but the look softened almost immediately. He giggled. “Okay, okay. If we ignore the fact that I have a dead Grian in my village-”

“I’m not dead!” Grian protested. He gestured at his larger form. “I told you, that’s just a puppet. It’s not like it’s a human body. It’s  _ stuffed. _ It’s not dead now any more than this body is ‘dead’ when I’m in that one.”

“Somehow, explaining it that way doesn’t make it any less creepy,” Scar admitted. “But aside from that, look at you! I was just thinking how cute that is.”

Scar reached out to grab Grian. Grian hopped backward out of reach. “Ah, ah!”

Scar snatched his hand back. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

“No worries,” Grian replied. “Just a little skittish about being picked up like that. Not that I don’t trust you, but anything bad that happens to any of my bodies gets shared across all of them, so since this one is my main one and generally a little more fragile, I’m a bit more cautious with it.”

_ “Any _ of your bodies?” Scar echoed. “You have more than just two?”

“Sometimes,” Grian clarified. “I usually abandon extras, though, and just keep this one and something fairly human-like around. I wouldn’t be able to permanently ditch this body even if I wanted to, and humans are useful for things like... hands.” He waved his stumpy arm again to demonstrate. “And for getting around in a human-size world. Having a lot of puppets around might be fun, I could stash them all in different places and jump between them to instant-travel, but it gets really hard to keep track of all of them. I mean look - even with just the two of me, I still managed to leave a door open or something and get carried off by a cat!”

Scar giggled despite himself. “Well, good thing I was here to chase off that big, mean ocelot, huh?”

Grian made a motion with his head that approximated rolling his eyes. “Don’t patronize me,” he scolded. “Oop, sun’s going down.”

The little doll flopped over. Grian, now back in his human-sized body, unfolded himself and stood up, taking the smaller doll back into his arms. “Can’t exactly fight off monsters like that, can I? Anyway, thank you for helping me out, Scar. I’m glad you found me.”

Scar smiled. “I’m glad I found you, too! That could have gone worse, right?”

  
Grian just laughed and prepared to take off back home on his elytra. He turned back to Scar one last time. “Remember, though, don’t tell  _ anyone _ about this. Please?”

Scar made a zipper motion across his mouth, before realizing the irony of that implication around Grian. He accepted it and winked at Grian. “Don’t worry - my lips are sealed.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little more in-depth use of the headcanon that I used in About Face! If you have any questions about it feel free to ask b/c I love to exposit this stuff :P


End file.
